Free (LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris Page A

pang of dismay. If the doors were closed, class had begun.
    I turned the knob carefully, trying to be quiet. On the threshold, I bowed, my bag tucked under my arm. When I straightened, I saw the class was already in shiko dachi—legs spraddled, faces calm, arms crossed over their chests. A few eyes rolled in my direction. I went to one of the chairs by the wall, pulled off my shoes and socks, and faced the wall to finish putting on my gi, as was proper. I wound the obi around my waist and managed the knot in record time, then ran silently to my place in line, second. Raphael Roundtree and Janet Shook had unobtrusively shifted sideways to make room when they saw me enter, and I was grateful.
    I bowed briefly to Marshall without meeting his eyes, then sank into position. After a few seconds of regulating my breathing, I peeked up at Marshall. He raised his dark eyebrows slightly. Marshall always makes the most of his quarter-Oriental heritage by working hard on inscrutability; his triangular face, its complexion somewhere between the pink of Caucasian and the ivory of Asian, remained calm. But the bird-wing eyebrows said volumes—surprise, disappointment, disapproval.
    Shiko dachi is a position very like sitting on air, and it is painful and demanding even after long practice. The best way to get through it is to concentrate on something else, at least for me. But I was too upset to go into meditation. Instead, I scanned the line of fellow sufferers reflected in the mirror lining the opposite wall.
    Newcomers are always at the end of the line. The newest man’s head was bowed, his legs trembling—so probably the class had been in position for a minute and a half or two minutes. I hadn’t missed much.
    After a few seconds, I began to relax. The pain required my attention and the anxiety of my encounter with the policeman began to fade. I started my meditation on the kata we would practice later. Ignoring the ache in my quadriceps, I visualized the various moves that made up geiki sei ni bon, I reminded myself of mistakes I habitually made, and I anticipated further refining the grace and power of the kata, a series of martial arts strikes, blocks, and kicks woven together in what becomes almost a dance.
    “Three minutes,” said the first-in-line student, a huge black man named Raphael Roundtree. His watch was strapped to his obi.
    “Another minute,” said Marshall, and I could feel the dismay, though no one made a sound. “Be sure your thighs are parallel with the floor.”
    There was a general ripple of movement down the line as students corrected their stance. I stayed rock-still; my shiko dachi was as perfect as I could make it. My feet were the correct distance apart, pointing outward at the correct angle; my back was straight.
    I emerged from my reverie for a moment to glance down the line in the mirror. The last-in-line man was in serious trouble. Though he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, sweat was streaming down his face. His legs were trembling violently. With some amazement, I recognized my next-door neighbor, Carlton Cockroft, who had so generously let me know he’d seen me out walking in the night.
    I shut my eyes and tried to refocus on the kata, but I was too full of surprise and conjecture.
    When Raphael called, “Four minutes,” it was as much relief to me as it was to the rest of the class.
    We all stood, shifting from leg to leg to shake off the pain.
    “Lily! Stretches!” Marshall said, his gaze just grazing me as it swept down the line. He retreated to a corner, where he watched us all for the slightest sign of slacking.
    I bowed and ran to face the rest of the class. There were only eight that night. Janet and I were the only women, and we were much of an age, though I thought Janet might be thirty to my thirty-one. The men ranged from twenty to perhaps fifty-five.
    “Kiotske!” I said sharply to bring them to attention. “Rai,” I instructed, bowing to them. They bowed to me in return,